Derived and Modified from the Case Study by Murthy, G.S.R, Murthy, A.L.

N and Murty,
K.G. (2015): Wood Inventory Management in Paper Industry

The Paper Manufacturing Process

Figure 1 shows the paper manufacturing process using wood as the basic raw
material. Wood of conifers is generally preferred because it consists of longer fibers
than the wood of deciduous trees (like eucalyptus, subabul, beech, etc.), as longer
fibers form a firmer fibrous web leading to firmer paper on the paper machine. Most
paper manufacturing companies in India, including the large ones, use debarked logs
of eucalyptus, subabul, casurina trees as these are locally grown abundantly. The
company where this project was carried out uses 1,300,000 tons of wood logs of
eucalyptus, subabul, casurina (the percentage of these species in the mix is
approximately 50%, 40%, 10 %, respectively) annually; and some imported wood
pulp, to manufacture writing and printing paper, and paperboard (used for manufacturing
packing boxes for packing a variety of consumer goods like toothpaste tubes etc.).
About 70 % of their wood pulp requirement is met by pulp made at the company with the
wood supply mentioned above, and 30% met by imported wood pulp in the form of dry
sheets. Paperboard is manufactured on the paper machine by gluing together three
sheets of paper made simultaneously.

Figure 1. From Forest to Finished Products: The Paper Making Process (Details at:
http://www.internationalpaper.com/documents/EN/Sustainability/PaperProcess.pdf.)
 The first major operation in paper making is the preparation of pulp from which
paper is made. Paper mills can make the pulp from wood themselves (these mills are
called integrated mills), or they can buy pulp in the form of dry pressed sheets (these
sheets are broken down into pulp with water as they enter the manufacturing process).
Wood consists of mostly cellulose, lignin (dark colored chemical compounds that hold
the cellulose fibers in wood together), and minor amounts of resins, tanins, and mineral
material. There are two basic ways of pulping wood logs. In mechanical pulping,
wood logs are processed into pulp by grinding them against a quickly rotating stone
disc with water, resulting in mechanical pulp (MP); this process yields 95% pulp, but it
leaves all the lignin in the pulp. The mechanical pulping process damages the fibers in
wood, with the result that paper made from it is not strong; and since all the lignin is left
in MP, paper made from it becomes yellow very quickly.
In chemical pulping, logs are processed into wood chips of about 3” size in the
chipping process at the beginning of paper making. Wood chips of various species of
wood in the raw material mix are mixed together, and this mixture then enters the
chemical cooking process. Here, the wood chips are cooked in a chemical solution which
converts lignin into a water-soluble substance that is then washed out, leaving a pulp
that consists of mostly cellulose fiber. So the yield of chemical pulping is
approximately 50 % of the input wood, but the fibers in it are clean and undamaged.
Spent fluids from chemical cooking are processed to recover the chemicals for reuse. The
pulp at this stage is brown in color, it goes to the bleaching process next. Bleaching is
a continuation of the chemical cooking process; it also removes the remaining lignin in
the pulp. Bleaching is a complex process consisting of several chemical process steps
with washing of the pulp between the various treatments.
Then, the pulp enters the refining process, where it goes through a fine blending of
the fiber ends for a close-knit connection between individual fibers (for increasing the
strength of paper produced), addition of water, fillers, sizing materials, dyes, and
additives (like kaolin, china clay, chalk, titanium dioxide etc. to make paper more
opaque, softer, and flexible). Then, the watery pulp enters the paper machine.
Once pulp has been prepared, the next operation in making paper for writing
and printing, is forming it into a sheet. This transforms the diluted pulp into a fine
uniform laminate on the paper machine consisting of a head box, and a forming
machine. Pulp arrives at the head box through round tubing, but it transfers it onto the
paper forming wire mesh in the form of a thin wide and uniform wet sheet. Pulp exits
the head box through a series of equispaced nozzles spread across the width-line of
the paper sheet to be formed; pulp comes out of each nozzle as a jet
spray onto a continuously moving paper forming wire mesh (normally made of either
polyethylene or polyurethane). The paper sheet is consolidated during this journey;
water passing freely through the wire mesh drops down by gravity from it first, and is
sucked from it by vacuum suction towards the end of the forming section.
On leaving the forming section, the paper sheet has 20% consistency (i.e., it is 80%
water), and enters the further drying process called wet pressing. In this process, the
paper sheet is passed between rolls in contact with felt which turns around the rolls of
the presses absorbing water from the sheet.
When the paper sheet comes out of wet pressing, its water content is about 60%.
Next it enters the drying operation, in which more water is eliminated from it through the
application of heat by passing through heated air, through contact over huge steam-
heated cylinders, and through infrared drying. At the end of this operation, the water
content of the paper sheet is reduced to its target of approximately 5%. This drying is
one of the costliest operations in paper manufacturing.
Then, the paper sheet enters the coating operation, where a starch-based emulsion
consisting of special coatings is applied to the paper sheet in two stages called as
pre-coat and a final-coat, to give it smoothness and shine necessary so that inks can
easily be applied on it for writing, and printing. The composition of the coating
emulsion is tailored to the specific properties required for the final sheet of paper,
such as water resistance, gloss, opacity, smoothness, and whiteness.
Some papers that require high surface finish, now pass through an operation known as
calendering whose main purpose is to improve the gloss and printing properties of
paper.
After the calendering operation, the paper sheet is rolled up in the form of reels
known as jumbo rolls. Customers require paper either in the form of reels of specified
sizes, or in the form of sheets of standard sizes. Depending on these requirements, in
the finishing section, jumbo rolls are either rewound into reels as required by the
customer, or cut into sheets and packed into packets for delivery to customers.
1 Wood Inventory Management in a Paper Mill

In this chapter, wood inventory management and optimization, based on a consulting

project carried out by the Indian Statistical Institute at a leading paper manufacturing
company in India, will be discussed. The first process at the company is the chipping
process, and the mixture of wood of different species fed into the chippers is called
wood mixture, and the proportions of different species in the wood mixture is referred to
as furnish. The Management develops furnish specifications in each planning horizon
based upon the yield forecasts of the various species in that year, cost/ton of each
species, and other considerations. Out of the different species, subabul and eucalyptus
account for about 90% of the wood mixture. At present rates, the cost of subabul and
eucalyptus are $1,000/metric ton and $1,200/metric ton respectively. In making a
paper, it is assumed that both the subabul and eucalyptus contributes equal
percentage per metric ton of paper sheets.
Wood quantities are measured in tons. The quantity of wood that the company can
procure monthly depends on the availabilities of wood, and trucks to haul it; both of which
tend to be low during the summer months of March to August. This seasonal variation in
the supply of wood over the year is the reason for the company maintaining a
reliable source of wood to avoid the possibilities of shortages and stock outs. Shown in
Table 1 is the available supplies of wood per month per type of wood. There are two
types of handling the procured wood, these are the direct and indirect handling.
Direct handling cost refers to the hauling of procured wood from supplier to the
facility and direct handling costs $10/metric ton and $15/metric ton, for subabul and
eucalyptus woods, respectively. Indirect handling cost is much higher than the direct
handling cost. It refers to the retrieval of the wood from the storage of the facility to
the feeding area. The indirect handling cost of subabul wood is $110/metric ton
while $80/metric ton for eucalyptus wood.
Each day procured wood logs arrive at the company in trucks. Some of these
trucks are sent to the production facility as they arrive, to unload the wood in them
directly into the chippers. Wood fed into the chippers like this is called direct feed. The
remaining incoming trucks are sent to the wood storage yard for storing the wood in
them. Each day, besides the direct feed, some wood is also drawn from the storage
yard to feed the chippers, stored wood fed like this is referred to as indirect feed. Thus,
each day the feed into the chippers consists of direct and indirect feeds. The company
maintains at least 25% of both wood species to be processed through direct feed per
month while at most 75% should be indirect feeds. Moreover, at least 80% of the
whole quantity of indirect feeds must be subabul woods. The remaining percentage of
procured wood not used for this month’s production is stored first in the storage area
incurring $10/ metric ton for either subabul or eucalyptus.
The planning horizon is from January 1st to December 31st. The production manager
of the pulp mill specifies the monthly requirements of wood for each wood species
for the entire year. The company uses month as the planning unit. The raw materials
manager uses these monthly production requirements for paper (as shown in Table 1)
to work out a month-wise production plan for the year, and accordingly fixes deals
with suppliers for wood.
The company would like to determine how much wood of each specie to procure
each month for the year 2022 and how much of it is to be used as direct feed and
indirect feed so that various constraints are satisfied and the overall cost is minimized.
 Table 1. Summary of data
Subabul Eucalyptus
Required Ending Inventory Demand
(metric tons) (metric tons)
(metric tons)
Month (i) Availability Availability Subabul Eucalyptus
Dec (0) - - 8,540 7,350 -
Jan (1) 19,283 11,738 6,500 3,400 27,100
Feb (2) 18,260 12,478 3,250 1,375 27,201
Mar (3) 17,772 11,249 2,974 1,464 27,071
Apr (4) 16,386 11,784 4,068 2,003 24,350
May (5) 13,793 7086 2,787 1,372 20,663
Jun (6) 11,549 8374 795 392 20,860
Jul (7) 17,720 15,614 5,023 2,473 24,794
Aug (8) 20,615 23,985 7,572 3,728 38,447
Sept (9) 34,338 30,515 12,378 6,094 55,110
Oct (10) 22,473 22,023 4,607 2,268 53,881
Nov (11) 28,221 18,486 1,921 946 48,628
Dec (12) 24,643 15,575 3,784 1,863 35,264

References

1. Paper. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/paper. Accessed 30 June 2014.

2. History of paper. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_paper. Accessed 30 June 2014.
3. Sappi: Inspired by life. www.sappi.com. Accessed 30 June 2014.
4. Toraspapel. www.torraspapel.com. Accessed 30 June 2014.